According to the wise man, it was a difficult task to find a virtuous woman.
It was a quiet time in the afternoon, and in order to verify my recollection of the wise man's saying, which was a little cloudy in my memory, I searched through Julia's Bible for it. I came across a passage which made me pause and consider. "Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account: which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not; one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found."
"Tardif is the man," I said to myself, "but is Julia the woman? Have I had better luck than Solomon?"
"What are you reading, Martin?" asked my father, who had just come in, and was painfully fitting on a pair of new and very tight kid gloves. I read the passage aloud, without comment.
"Very good," he remarked, chuckling, "upon my word! I did not know there was any thing as rich as that in the old book! Who says it, Martin? A very wise preacher he was, and knew what he was talking about. Had seen life, eh? It's as true as—as—as the gospel."
I could not help laughing at the comparison he was forced to; yet I felt angry with him and myself.
"What do you say about my mother and Julia, sir?" I asked.
He chuckled again cynically, examining with care a spot on the palm of one of his gloves. "Ha! ha! my son"—I hated to hear him say "my son"—"I will answer you in the words of another wise man: 'Most virtuous women, like hidden treasures, are secure because nobody seeks after them.'"
So saying, he turned out of the room, swinging his gold-headed cane jauntily between his fingers.
I visited Sark again in about ten days, to set Olivia free from my embargo upon her walking. I allowed her to walk a little way along a smooth meadow-path, leaning on my arm; and I found that she was a head lower than myself—a beautiful height for a woman. That time Captain Carey had set me down at the Havre Gosselin, appointing me to meet him at the Creux Harbor, which was exactly on the opposite side of the island. In crossing over to it—a distance of rather more than a mile—I encountered Julia's friends, Emma and Maria Brouard.